New NCAAT Selection Committee Criteria Emphasizes Neutral Site/Away Games

[blazindw]

The NCAA today released new criteria (http://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2017-12-05/ncaa-selection-committee-adjusts-team-sheets-emphasizing?cid=ncaammsocial_tw_sf175351262&sf175351262=1) that will emphasize away wins and wins on neutral courts in selecting teams for the NCAA Tournament. The new breakdown will not be based on 1-50, 51-100, 101-150, etc. The new breakdown will be in quadrants:

Quadrant 1: Home 1-30; Neutral 1-50; Away 1-75
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75; Neutral 51-100; Away 76-135
Quadrant 3: Home 76-100; Neutral 101-200; Away 136-240
Quadrant 4: Home 161-plus; Neutral 201-plus; Away 241-plus.

Will this affect Duke? It shouldn't, as we'll hopefully be in line for a 1 seed if the season progresses as it has right so far. What this could affect is the mid-lower tier Power 5 conference teams when being compared to some of those mid-major teams that schedule a lot of nonconference away games and games on neutral courts. The example in the article used the 2015-16 Monmouth team that barely missed the NCAA Tournament and probably should have been in. They state that under the new criteria, Monmouth would have been safely in because their list of wins on the road and on neutral courts would have been weighted more and given them a much stronger resume.

It will be interesting to see how this applies to mid-majors and those lower tier P5 teams who are trying to get off the bubble, and how it will affect scheduling in future years.

[BD80]

The NCAA today released new criteria (http://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2017-12-05/ncaa-selection-committee-adjusts-team-sheets-emphasizing?cid=ncaammsocial_tw_sf175351262&sf175351262=1) that will emphasize away wins and wins on neutral courts in selecting teams for the NCAA Tournament. The new breakdown will not be based on 1-50, 51-100, 101-150, etc. The new breakdown will be in quadrants:

Quadrant 1: Home 1-30; Neutral 1-50; Away 1-75
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75; Neutral 51-100; Away 76-135
Quadrant 3: Home 76-100; Neutral 101-200; Away 136-240
Quadrant 4: Home 161-plus; Neutral 201-plus; Away 241-plus.

Will this affect Duke? It shouldn't, as we'll hopefully be in line for a 1 seed if the season progresses as it has right so far. What this could affect is the mid-lower tier Power 5 conference teams when being compared to some of those mid-major teams that schedule a lot of nonconference away games and games on neutral courts. The example in the article used the 2015-16 Monmouth team that barely missed the NCAA Tournament and probably should have been in. They state that under the new criteria, Monmouth would have been safely in because their list of wins on the road and on neutral courts would have been weighted more and given them a much stronger resume.

It will be interesting to see how this applies to mid-majors and those lower tier P5 teams who are trying to get off the bubble, and how it will affect scheduling in future years.

Great info. Thanks.

also deserves a bump

[SCMatt33]

It will be interesting to see how this applies to mid-majors and those lower tier P5 teams who are trying to get off the bubble, and how it will affect scheduling in future years.

So this was actually released during the offseason, the NCAA just put an article on their website about it today. I bring that up because, while I don't have a link at the moment, I believe CBS did some case studies on past bubble teams to gauge the impact. IIRC, what they found was that it had a pretty minor impact, but actually tended to hurt the mid majors, as they generally had few top 50 wins, and they'd often come in a home and home sweep of someone else who had a decent too on their league. This only served to diminish one of those wins, and doesn't help prop up the rest of their league that normally well outside the top 100 anyway. Conversely, mid tier power programs were helped as many had top 30 wins anyway and some of the road slip ups that would be seen as bad losses before became mitigated since bottom tier power teams tend to hang around close to the top 100

[PackMan97]

Interesting that a win vs a top 30 team will now basically count the same as a win vs a top 75 team on the window.

[uh_no]

Interesting that a win vs a top 30 team will now basically count the same as a win vs a top 75 team on the window.

it's almost like they should use a continuous scale rather than one that bins the teams based on discrete cutoffs.

If only there were people who assembled such data....

[PackMan97]

I apologize for autocorrect. I don't know how "road" became "window". /shrug

[gray]

RIP, Syracuse.

[kako]

I'm so-so on this by itself. Teams may start scheduling to avoid Quad 3/4 losses. Little upside with significant downside? It may be tougher for the very weak teams to get better. The power conferences will still have the built-in advantage. Maybe instead of always giving the same power conference team a low-level at-large bid year after year, perhaps use this system and let in a newcomer within the same range, or those that took a big jump. New blood, reward improvement.

[SCMatt33]

it's almost like they should use a continuous scale rather than one that bins the teams based on discrete cutoffs.

If only there were people who assembled such data...

They do use a continuous scale. Every single game has the rank of the team listed there. You can't just list it in one continuous column or you'd have a jumbled mess. You have to organize your data somehow. The team sheets are pretty sophisticated in terms of providing both discrete data points for games and aggregate data for the season. Certainly most would argue that they should use a different ranking system, but it's not like the people on the room don't know the different between beating team 1 and team 50 or think that beating team 50 is tremendously better than team 51. They don't just flash a big bold "7-5 vs top 50" on a projector and then discuss. This method of organization is a clear improvement.

[OldPhiKap]

Somehow, Alabama will still get in.

(I keed!)

[Bluedog]

Thank you!!! Kenpom is happy about this I'm sure...

[devildeac]

Somehow, Alabama will still get in.

(I keed!)

And "u"nc will still cheat.